No time for volunteering? It takes less time than you might think!

Lack of time is one of the reasons many non-volunteers cite for their lack of involvement. What most of them don’t realise is that there are ad-hoc, flexible, short-term volunteering opportunities that don’t require a full-on long-term commitment.

Examples of that in Sheffield are those from SAFE@LAST (e.g. helping with their fundraising events or awareness-raising conferences), Sheffield City Council (helping their rangers and parks’ friends groups with conservations and park clean-ups), and Sheffield-Now (supporting children and young people to create ‘recycled playgrounds’ in a day). All of these opportunities are now listed on the Events page of the Sheffield Quality Time blog (www.sheffieldqualitytime.wordpress.com) which members of the public have been viewing since the site launched at the start of April. At least one volunteer application has already resulted for a one-off event with SAFE@LAST, so it is starting to work!

If you have events that you need volunteers to help at, please let me know so that I can add them to the calendar. If you don't already have any of these events, it may be well worth your while considering how you could go about creating some, as many people who volunteer at one-off events go on to become 'long term' volunteers if they enjoy their initial 'taster'.

Alternatively, if you know people / groups who may be interested in volunteering at the events please pass on the link to them - they can access the calendar via the Events Page at http://www.sheffieldqualitytime.wordpress.com/